Kicking up the dust along Dawson City's unpaved streets

Sure, it's a real effort to get here: from Whitehorse it's a 700km paddle along the Yukon River, a 536km drive along the lonely North Klondike Highway or a one-hour flight in an undersized plane. The journey from Alaska is hardly easier: from the US border it is more than a 100km drive along the rough and ready Top of the World Highway.

But it's more than worth your time because despite or perhaps due to its remoteness, Dawson City remains Canada's coolest town.

In the early 1900s when Dawson City was the focal point for the Klondike gold rush, it was the largest city north of San Francisco - buzzing with brothels, dance halls, theatres and 30,000 brave fortune-seekers.

Nowadays, a mere 2,000 hardy characters call Dawson City home, although the population swells in the summer when tourists flock here to roam the atmospheric dirt streets, admire the wooden false-fronted buildings and experience a city that inspired literary greats like Jack London and Robert Service.

Thanks to strict building codes, even the newer buildings are indistinguishable from their heritage counterparts and the city remains refreshingly free from big-box stores, fast-food chains and even cell phone reception!

Tourist shenanigans in Dawson City revolve around cruising the Yukon River, playing golf at midnight, learning about the native Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in culture, visiting the one-time haunts of Jack London and Robert Service and gold-panning in the one river that still has a few microscopic flecks of gold.

Lying only 300km south of the Arctic Circle, in the summer you'd be hard-pressed distinguishing between day and night. Still, light or dark, come evening Dawson City knows how to kick up its heels.

The town's most famous drinking hole is the Sourdough Saloon where the house tipple is the Sour Toe Cocktail - a stiff drink involving a real pickled, putrid human toe. A few dusty streets away, Bombay Peggy's offers live music and a more laid-back drinking experience. As far as bang for your buck goes, the legendary Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Hall has it all - an old-style casino and burlesque dancers who flash their knickers at penny-pinching punters three times nightly.

On the summer solstice, Dawson City celebrates with an all-night party on the Midnight Dome, the hill behind the town. Here, you can watch the sun dip close to the horizon before rising again straight away.

While Dawson City sees most action between June and September when the days are long and warm, the annual Yukon Quest draws a significant winter crowd. Billed as the "toughest dog sled race in the world" it passes through town every February on the 1,600km run over mountain ranges and frozen rivers from Whitehorse to Fairbanks in Alaska.

Dawson City is also the jumping off point for prime grizzly bear-spotting in the 2,000-square-kilometre Tombstone Mountain Territorial Park and for driving the Dempster Highway - a 736km gravel road which crosses the Arctic Circle before ending in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.